James Forsyth on how the two candidates earned their party’s nominations and how the final stages of the campaign are playing out
It was on the eve of the Iowa caucus, 2 January, that it became clear that Barack Obama’s candidacy was more than just a form of political entertainment. Obama’s last speaking engagement was in a high school gym in Des Moines. It was the hot ticket of a cold night. This was the best orator in a generation giving the most important speech of his political career so far; the youthful crowd were expecting quite a show.
But the star attraction had lost his voice. When he tried to hit the rhetorical high notes, nothing came out. The crowd didn’t desert or turn on him, though. Instead, they chanted his iconic slogans, carrying him through. As they filed out of the hall into the snow, they were quieter than they had been going in. But talking to them I realised that they were more determined; the experience had bonded them to the candidate in a way that another fine speech would not have done. That evening, the Obama candidacy matured into more than the sum of its words.
The next night I went to a caucus in Johnston, a suburb of Des Moines. In 2004, 90 people had caucused here. The locals I was going with thought there’d be more this year, maybe twice that. But when we arrived, the lines were around the block: 795 voters were trying to get in. The queue to register as a Democrat went out the door and even on this bitter January night people were prepared to wait outside to be signed in. The story was similar, if less dramatic, all across Iowa. For the first time the Obama supporters’ mantra, that ‘change is coming’ sounded more prescient than pretentious.
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, who was at the Johnston caucus site as a Clinton surrogate, looked taken aback. When she was told that the networks had called Iowa for Obama based on an entrance poll and that Hillary appeared to have come third, she was lost for words: there was no spinning this story.
That night, voice restored, Obama gave a speech that sounded presidential. He seemed physically more imposing than he had been the night before. This was a man who knew that he was now the Democratic front-runner. It was no longer audacious of him to hope that someone who addressed his party’s last convention as a Senate candidate would do so this year as its nominee.
Obama swept into New Hampshire with the wind at his back. His rallies drew huge crowds and he raced into a double-digit poll lead. But then, as was to happen so often in the race, his momentum was checked. Hillary Clinton pulled off a stunning come-from-behind win; Obama had not put down the roots in New Hampshire that he had in Iowa. A primary race that could have been effectively over was suddenly wide open again.
Hillary’s victory was a testament to her tenacity. During the final New Hampshire debate on Saturday night she was attacked in both personal — Obama’s cutting ‘you’re likeable enough’ jibe — and policy terms. But on Sunday she was still up early for a canvassing effort. However, when she arrived to kick things off with a short speech it turned out that her microphone didn’t work. The snappers sensed a moment: Hillary was speaking but no one could hear. Then Chelsea Clinton stepped in: the shy daughter who dislikes the cameras started doing star jumps, the cameramen were captivated and disaster avoided. Chelsea went on to become her mother’s most effective surrogate, no small feat considering Bill’s talents.
What kept Hillary alive in New Hampshire were blue-collar Democrats who wanted a tried and tested fighter. They were as wary of Obama’s high-flown rhetoric as his supporters were captivated by it.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the stars were aligning for John McCain. McCain’s candidacy had seemed dead in the summer of 2007. His team had dramatically overspent and his campaign manager and strategist departed in the ensuing chaos. Many of those who stayed with McCain admit now that they did so not because they thought he could win but because they wanted to ensure an honourable exit for this American hero. But none of the other Republican candidates could capitalise and McCain continued to be the Republican who had the best chance in the general election in what was always going to be a tough year for the GOP.
Rudy Giuliani’s operatic private life, socially liberal positions and dislike of the kind of coffee-shop campaigning that you have to do in the early primary states resulted in him squandering his status as the front-runner. Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping and Mormonism meant that for all his money and organisational presence he couldn’t win over the evangelical base of the party. The Senator-turned-actor Fred Thompson, hailed as a ‘Southern-fried Reagan’ when he entered the race, appeared to be attempting a low-energy version of William McKinley’s front porch campaign, waiting for the voters to come to him. While former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was hampered by the fact that no one thought he could actually win, denying him crucial funds and institutional support.
Once Giuliani effectively pulled out of New Hampshire in order to stake everything on the risky strategy of getting off the mark in Florida, the fifth primary of the season, it was clear that a McCain win in New Hampshire, the state that had propelled him to prominence in 2000, would put him right back in the race. To hold off the challenge of Romney, the former governor of neighbouring Massachusetts, McCain desperately needed Romney’s momentum to be slowed heading into the Granite State primary.
Huckabee, despite being outspent by more than ten to one, did this by beating Romney in Iowa. This was a humiliation for Romney, who had spent much more time and money in Iowa than any other candidate. He had also changed his political persona from can-do technocrat to culture warrior in an attempt to appeal to Iowa’s socially conservative Republicans.
Huckabee, with his folksy campaign message spread by home school and church networks, was to dog Romney for the rest of the campaign. Just before the final New Hampshire primary debate, one of Huckabee’s chief aides told a reporter, ‘We’re going to see if we can’t take Romney out… We like John. Nobody likes Romney.’
In New Hampshire, McCain won surprisingly easily: the state had fallen in love with him again thanks to the more than 100 town hall meetings that he held. His path to the nomination from then on was relatively smooth. Despite losing in Michigan to Romney, McCain won the crucial South Carolina and Florida primaries, benefiting yet again from the split Republican field. He effectively wrapped things up on Super Tuesday, less than a month after his New Hampshire win.
The Democratic race, however, went on and on. With the benefit of hindsight, it was probably South Carolina that set the stage for Obama’s eventual victory. The Clinton campaign had long assumed that the race would end on Super Tuesday; they had no strategy for the contests that followed. But the South Carolina primary ten days before Super Tuesday created an atmosphere in which it was impossible for the Clintons to score a decisive victory.
South Carolina’s Democratic primary electorate is heavily African-American, which gave Obama a considerable advantage. But rather than just accept a loss there the Clintons appeared to make a conscious effort to try racially to polarise the electorate. Bill, whom Hillary had deputised to campaign for her, came perilously close to race-baiting. Democrats got angry. When Bill Clinton’s face appeared on a screen at Obama’s victory rally booing broke out, and with days to go before Super Tuesday the Clintons’ reputation among Democrats was horribly damaged.
To compound this, the media were now viewing the ra
ce through a prism that favoured Obama. His achievement in getting a majority of the vote in a three-way race, and winning more than 50 per cent of whites under 30 in a state with historically some of the worst race relations in the South — the Confederate flag still flies on the grounds of the State House in South Carolina — had emphasised the historic nature of his candidacy. Obama appeared to be the future and the Clintons the past.
Obama survived Super Tuesday and then went on a roll, winning the next ten contests. He did, though, have trouble wrapping things up. He missed several opportunities to force Hillary to drop out. Indeed, the remaining primaries highlighted two general election problems for Obama. First, blue-collar Democrats in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania were still resistant to his charms. Second, voters seemed to have a moment of hesitation when asked to put Obama over the top. The success of Hillary’s 3 a.m. ad in Texas — it helped her come from behind to win the popular vote — demonstrated that Obama still had to show that he was ready to be commander-in-chief if he was to win in November.
When it came to the general election, McCain was running in the worst political circumstances for Republicans since 1976. Only once since the second world war has a party held the White House for a third term and that was when George H. W. Bush won in 1988 after two terms of successful Republican governance under Ronald Reagan. By contrast, McCain was running with only nine per cent of Americans satisfied with the direction of the country and with a Republican in the White House with historically low approval ratings. Everything would have to go McCain’s way for him to win.
The best chance for McCain was to stay close over the summer and then pass Obama on the final stretch as the commander-in-chief question, McCain’s trump card, came to the fore. He did an impressive job of not letting Obama get too far ahead. After another campaign dust-up, he promoted Steve Schmidt, who had managed Bush’s war room in 2004, to effectively run his whole operation. Schmidt ran an aggressive campaign which contested every news cycle, preventing Obama from building up a head of steam.
This strategy appeared to be working when the Russian invasion of Georgia and Obama’s foot-dragging response to it helped McCain close the gap to within the margin of error. McCain then received a helping hand when the first couple of days of the Democratic convention in Denver were dominated by Clinton melodrama. He even had a response to Obama’s convention speech (delivered on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, to a packed football stadium and a then-record TV audience), unveiling the little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate the next day. McCain’s convention bounce, boosted by a brilliantly delivered speech by Palin, even moved him into the lead.
Then everything started to turn against McCain. The shine came off Palin when she blundered in one of her few set-piece TV interviews, revealing an alarming lack of knowledge. But far more importantly, the financial system started to collapse. This not only brought the economy — an issue on which McCain by his own admission is weak — to the fore but seemed to prove Obama’s point that the real risk was not change but carrying on the same way.
McCain’s other problem was of his own making: he still lacked a central message. Throughout the summer he was unable to tack to the centre due to suspicion of him among the Republican base. The Palin pick solved this problem, but McCain didn’t seize the opportunity.
This election has been anything but predictable. Every time it has seemed to be over, something has thrown it wide open again. Yet in a year when the Republicans needed everything to go their way, events seem to have come out for Obama. But there might just be time for one last twist.
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